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Caution: Deep Snow (among other things)

Posted on December 9, 2013

One of the things that bothers me just a little is how the general rubric “Christmas Songs” covers a wide variety of songs which have nothing at all to do with the twenty-fifth of December. “Let It Snow”, for example, is a winter song, not a Christmas song, and “Jingle Bells” does not mention any holiday until you get to the verses nobody sings anyway (and which I suspect were added later because somebody decided the archetypal American Christmas song ought to mention the holiday.)

There is no reason we could not hear “Winter Wonderland” or “Sleighride” on the radio in January, but we hardly ever do, somehow. It’s as if at some point on December 26, the stage director claps loud hands and shouts, “Okay, people: snow is no longer any fun! Wrap it up!” (This is not the same as the people who hate snow on any day except December 25. These are a special breed known as “Commuters”, and they are very hard to satisfy at any time of year.)

Anyway, I felt that perhaps I could try my hand at a Book Fair winter song, a song just as valid for Book Fair managers (a breed similar to commuters) in February as at the end of December. It can be sung, by the brave, to the tune of “It’s a Marshmallow World”.